Marmontel was so much delighted with this society, even at a very advanced age, that he gives us also accounts of their evening parties:  “As I was in the habit of dining with the learned and with the artists at Madame Geoffrin’s, so was I also of supping with her in her more limited and select circle.  At these petits soupers there was no carousing or luxuries,—­a fowl, spinach and pancakes constituted the usual fare.  The society was not numerous:  there met together only five or six of her particular friends, or even persons of the highest rank, who were suited to each other, and therefore enjoyed themselves.”  It appears distinctly from the passage already quoted from Marmontel, how the high nobility on these occasions treated the learned, and how the learned demeaned themselves toward the nobility.  It appears, therefore, that Rousseau was not in error when he alleged that emptiness and wantonness only were cherished in these societies, and that the literature which was then current was only a slow poison.

Madame du Deffant appeared on the stage of the great world contemporaneously with Geoffrin, and attained so high a degree of celebrity, that the Emperor Joseph paid her a visit in her advanced period of life, and thus afforded her the opportunity of paying him that celebrated compliment which is found related in every history of France.  With respect to Deffant, however, we must not listen to Marmontel; she stood above his rhymes, his love tales, his sentimental wanton stories, and besides, he knew her only when she had become old.  What we Germans name feminine and good morals formed no part of the distinction of Deffant, but talents only.  Like Tencin, she was ill-reputed in her youth on account of her amours, and reckoned the Regent among her fortunate wooers; at a later period she turned her attention to literature.

Deffant brought together at her house all those persons whom Voltaire visited when he was in Paris; among these the President Henault, and, at a later period of which we now speak, D’Alembert attracted to this circle distinguished foreigners and Frenchmen, who made any pretensions to culture and education.  Deffant assumed quite a different tone among the learned from that of Geoffrin.  She set up for a judge in questions of philosophy and taste, and carried on a constant correspondence with Voltaire.  Among celebrated foreigners, the Englishman Horace Walpole played the same character in this house which the Swede Creutz had assumed in that of Geoffrin.  Deffant and her Walpole became celebrated throughout Europe by their printed correspondence, which, on account of its smoothness and emptiness, like all books written for the great world, found very numerous readers.

Deffant, moreover, like Geoffrin. was faithless to her friends; she wished indeed to enjoy the most perfect freedom in their society, but she was unwilling that they should publish abroad this freedom.  And she strongly disapproved of the vehemence with which her friends assailed the existing order of things.